Contrary to public perception, India boasts of a large number of women – and their number is growing – who are venturing into politics at all levels. Many of these have left a profound and strong impact on the country’s political scenario, rubbing shoulders with their male counterparts. From holding august offices to being grassroots activists, they have given a strong account of themselves to influence political landscape in the country, discovers Vedika Jain
India, the world’s largest democracy, has a political landscape that has always been dynamic and diverse. Despite popular notions of women subjected to discrimination and abuse, fact remains India has a significant number of women politicians at the district, state and national level.
With every election term, more women are stepping forward to take key responsibilities and move centre stage in the country’s political field. In the 2019 general elections, there were more than 700 female candidates who had contested the elections of which 78 women won and were elected to the Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP). More and more independent women candidates with no political lineage are also standing for elections in the country.
A discussion on Indian politics is incomplete without the mention of Late Indira Gandhi, Maneka Gandhi, Sushma Swaraj, Jayalalithaa, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Sheila Dixit, Mayawati, Uma Bharti, Mamata Banerjee, Smriti Irani, etc.
Women leading the states
Till date, 16 women have served as Chief Ministers of Indian states and Union Territories including Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh that have been headed by two women Chief Ministers each. The other states who have had women Chief Ministers include Odisha, Assam, Punjab, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Goa andWest Bengal.
Mamata Banerjee is currently in office in West Bengal that is scheduled to have the general elections this year. She started her political career in the 1970s as a young woman party worker with the Congress party. She quickly rose the ranks within the party and was also the general secretary of the Mahila Congress, West Bengal for a few years. In the 1984 general elections, Mamata Banerjee became one of country’s youngest parliamentarians ever after she won the Jadavpur parliamentary constituency in West Bengal.
Due to political differences with Somendra Nath Mitra, in 1997 Mamata Banerjee left the Congress party to float her own All India Trinamool Congress along with other founding members. The party soon became a strong opposition party in the state. Mamata has also held key union ministries as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). These include the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Coal and Mines.
Indian politician and former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje started her political career in 1984. She belongs to the prominent Scindia royal family and has been active in Rajasthan politics. She has been an MP as well and was elected as Rajasthan’s Chief Minister on two occasions.
Women from marginalised communities pace ahead
In 2019, Chandrani Murmu created history by becoming the youngest MP after she won the Keonjhar (Odisha) seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. A tribal woman and an engineering graduate, Chandrani’s father Sanjiv Murmu is a government employee and mother Urbashi Soren is a homemaker. She has been in the news ever since her election and has been actively working towards the development of her constituency. In January 2021, she appealed to the Railway Minister to restart Puri-Barbil Intercity Express that was stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Railway is earning 15 crore per day as revenue from Keonjhar district and still the train service has not been resumed,” she said pointing out the need of the train to start to help thousands of people who commute for personal and business purposes every day.
The second ever Dalit woman MP elected from Kerala, Ramya Haridas is also the only female parliamentarian to be elected from Kerala in the 2019 Lok Sabha selections from the Alathur constituency. Belonging to an economically lower class, she had raised funds for her election campaign through crowd-funding campaigns.
Physical education teacher Goddeti Madhavi is the youngest Member of Parliament from Andhra Pradesh. She was elected to the lower house of the Parliament of India from Araku in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. She is also one of the ‘poorest’ members of the house with declared assets of a little over Rs 2 lakh. Upon election, she urged the Chief Minister of the state to encourage the cultivation of strawberries in Vishakapatnam agency area to improve income resources of tribal farmers and to develop the zone as a tourist destination.
The 27-year-old MP says, “I have joined politics to serve people and address the pressing issues such as drinking water, health care, education and unemployment that have been plaguing the tribals in the Agency for decades. Many villages and hamlets have no transport facility. My priority is to give a push to the ongoing infrastructure development projects.”
Indian women politicians hold prominent positions
One of the most renowned faces in Indian politics, Sushma Swaraj was a brand of her own. She had many firsts in her political career including being the youngest cabinet minister in the Haryana government, the first woman Chief Minister of Delhi and the first woman spokesperson for a national political party in the country. Before venturing into politics full-time, she was a Supreme Court lawyer when she started her practice in 1973. Her political career began soon after and she was an active participant in the movement started by Jayaprakash Narayan. After the emergency, she joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and soon rose to the national stage.
At the time of her death, Sushma Swaraj was the Minister of External Affairs of India in the first Narendra Modi government (2014–2019). She was also the second woman to hold the office of the foreign ministry, as it was previously called, after Indira Gandhi.
During her stint as the Minister of External Affairs, she represented India at several international for a including the United Nations General Assembly, where she raised critical issues like terrorism, climate change, etc. She strongly represented India’s interests across fora. She was extremely active on social media and personally intervened in reuniting families, ensuring stranded Indians are brought back home, etc., utilising India’s digital strength to the full.
Born into a Tamil family in Madurai, Nirmala Sitharaman has held several important positions and cabinet portfolios in her short political career. An economist by profession, she joined politics in 2006 and was included in PM Modi’s cabinet in 2014 as a junior minister. Proving her mettle time and again, Nirmala Sitharaman was appointed as India’s Defence Minister in 2017, being the second woman after Indira Gandhi to hold the position and the first full-time woman Defence Minister.
In 2019, in PM Modi’s second term, she was given the Finance and the Corporate Affairs Ministry. She is India’s first full-time female finance minister and presented her maiden budget in the Indian parliament on 5 July 2019.
A trailblazer, Smriti Irani has always broken stereotypes throughout her life when she started out as an actor, to producer and then a politician. Presently the Union Minister of Women and Child Development, she has held several important portfolios in the ruling government. She has been an extremely successful actor and popular among the masses.
Soon after joining politics full-time, she was given important roles and responsibilities that she has served with sincerity and dedication. She is the youngest woman to be nominated to the Rajya Sabha. She has also held the important Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Textiles, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and now the WCD Ministry. Smriti Irani is currently the youngest minister in the cabinet of PM Modi. She is also the first woman to hold office as the Union Minister for Human Resource Development and Union Minister of Textiles.